Research

Professor Efstathiou has wide interests in theoretical and observational cosmology and has contributed to studies of large-scale structure in the Universe, galaxy formation, dark energy and the cosmic microwave background radiation. He is a member of the Science Team for the European Space AgencyPlanck Satellite, which launched in 2009. Efstathiou is Chair of the Cambridge Planck Analysis Centre, which is developing methods to analyze the data that has been collected by the Planck satellite. The satellite’s two-year mission succeeded in measuring the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation with unprecedented accuracy.

In 1988, Efstathiou was appointed to the Savilian Chair of Astronomy at Oxford University, where he served as Head of Astrophysics for 6 years during this tenure. He returned to Cambridge in 1997 and continues to hold the position of Professor of Astrophysics (1909). He has served as Director of the Institute of Astronomy from 2004. In 2008 the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at Cambridge was established and Efstathiou was appointed the first Director of the new Institute until 2013.

Qualifications

Awards and Prizes

Several prizes for Efstathiou’s research have been awarded, in 1990 Efstathiou won the Maxwell Medal and Prize a principal award for outstanding contributions to theoretical physics made annually by the Institute of Physics. At the same time was awarded the Vainu Bappu Prize of the Astronomical Society of India. In 1994 received the Astrophysics Prize of the Bodossaki Foundation, followed by the Robinson Prize in Cosmology in 1997. In 2005 American Institute of Physics awarded Efstathiou along with his collaborator Simon White the Heineman Prize for Astrophysics in recognition of their pioneering research into evolution of structure in the Universe from the earliest times to the present epoch, as examples of outstanding work in the field of astrophysics. In 2011, Efstathiou received the Gruber Cosmology Prize from the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation. This was awarded jointly with Marc Davis, Carlos Frenk and Simon White for their pioneering work on ‘cold dark matter’ and use of numerical simulations to model and interpret the large-scale distribution of matter in the Universe. Most recently, Efstathiou received the Nemitsas Prize, which for 2013 was awarded in the research field of Physics and granted for “his pioneering use of computer simulations of structure formation in the universe, surveys of large-scale structure in the Universe, and for theoretical and observational investigations of the cosmic background radiation”.

Memberships

Efstathiou was first elected in 1980 as a Junior Research Fellowship at King’s College, University of Cambridge and in 1984 promoted to Senior Research Fellowship. From 1983 he became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, in 1994 and 1995 awarded as a member of the Royal Society and Institute of Physics respectively. In 1986 he was invited to be an Associate of the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research and Member of the International Astronomical Union. In 2012 was elected to the European Academy of Sciences.